Second Bull Run (or Second Manassas, as it was known in the South) is considered by many to be the greatest example of Robert E. Lee's tactical genius. It was also the final humiliation for John Pope, the Union general who had been personally selected by Abraham Lincoln to come East and lead the Union army to victory in northern Virginia. In the summer of 1862, George McClellan’s Union army was bogged down east of Richmond. In order to break this stalemate, Union officials decided to create a new army in northern Virginia and send it against Richmond from the north. Confederate commander Robert E. Lee, fresh from his costly victory against McClellan in the Seven Days Battle, mad a bold decision to risk leaving McClellan in place in order to strike a decisive blow against Pope’s new army.

Second Bull Run was the culmination of a series of maneuvers by which Lee, Longstreet, Jackson and Stuart out marched the larger Union command and outgeneraled its confused commanders. The book’s campaign approach also shows the relationship of the culminating battle to the related battles at Cedar Mountain, Groveton and Chantilly. The Second Bull Run Campaign includes fourteen specially commissioned maps by Paul Dangel, the most up-to-date order of battle available, and special sidebars on leaders, units, incidents and controversies of the campaign. Connections between the First and Second Bull Run battles are examined, the battlefields as they are today are described, and suggestions for farther study are made in a descriptive bibliography and reader’s guide.